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Integrated Modeling Of Communities: Parasitism, Competition, And Demographic Synchrony In Sympatric Ducks, Guillaume Péron, David N. Koons

David N. Koons

Functionally similar species often co-occur within an ecosystem, and they can compete for or facilitate each other’s access to resources. The coupled dynamics of such species play an important role in shaping biodiversity and an ecosystem’s resilience to perturbations. Here we study two congeneric North American ducks: Redhead Aythya americana and Canvasback A. vaselineria. Both are largely sympatric during the breeding season, and in addition to competition, facultative parasitic egg-laying can lead to interspecific density dependence. Using multi-population integrated models, we combined capture– recovery data, population surveys, and age ratio data in order to simultaneously estimate the mechanistic drivers of …